Intention and Anticipation.

I would like to kickoff my first blog post on what I intend to learn from J2150. Firstly, I wish to pick up professional photography skills. Being an amateur  whom only capture photographs using my iPhone, I anticipate to expand my skills in photography with the equipment provided by the journalism school. I am equally excited to lay my hands and explore the professional equipment such as the fancy Nikon D7000. By the end of this course, I wish to gain knowledge by knowing the appropriate apertures, lighting and angles for every photograph. Apart from expanding photography skills, I am eager to use the software that are required for this course such as Photoshop and Adobe Premiere. In all honesty, I have never explored any of these software and I believe the skills acquired will help me improve myself as an aspiring journalist. Additionally, I believe this course provides an opportunity to explore the world of multimedia and its impact on journalism. In this contemporary era, I am convinced that the knowledge I obtained on multimedia will benefit my career in the near future. 

On the first lecture in lab, we learned about headlines and cutlines. From the lecture, I learned that headlines should be short and sweet. The purpose of having short headlines is to help audience in understanding the general content of a story. Apart from being short, headlines are meant to capture audience's attention. An attention catching headline encourages audience to further read or watch a news. Therefore, a straightforward headline is better than a long-winded headline. On the other hand, cutlines are descriptions for photographs. I learned that cutlines can be written with the guidelines of who, where, what, when and why. Without cutlines, a photograph could be portrayed from various angles, and it is merely possible for audience to identify what the photograph is portraying. Therefore, cutline plays an essential role because it serves a purpose to assist in describing a photograph. 

All in all, the first week of lab classes turned out to be decent. I anticipate to gain more knowledge and skills in multimedia journalism through this course.